By Guest Blogger Liana Heitin Stephen thought his readers would be interested in a post over at Teaching Now about new-teacher induction. At a conference in Washington on Tuesday sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education, advocates for strengthening new-teacher supports gathered in an effort to shift the teacher-effectiveness discourseat least for the momentfrom evaluation to induction, with some arguing that reform efforts should focus on developing great teachers rather than laying off ineffective ones. Read the rest of the post here....

Teach For America founder and CEO Wendy Kopp and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel had a substantive discussion about the teaching profession today, showing that while some of their strategies for improving it may differ, they're on the same page on many issues.

For an agency that was so specific about what it wanted to see in the teacher-quality portions of the Race to the Top program, the U.S. Department of Education has put out guidance on waivers that's surprisingly general in the teacher quality arena.

In many ethnically diverse school districts across the country, teachers in schools that serve more African-American and Latino students are paid significantly less than teachers in other schools, federal data show.